The Hoard Facts

VMware Shifts to the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

By combining new and existing products in a package designed to facilitate customers using 5,600 VMware service providers in 62 countries, VMware is emphasizing its drive to the enterprise hybrid cloud. In so doing, The company is offering its vCloud customers a myriad of cloud services based on VMware cloud infrastructures that are compatible with any virtualized VMware data center.

The first component of the new package is Global Connect, which provides a single global cloud built on VMware vCloud Datacenter Services introduced in August 2010. vCloud Datacenter Services are enterprise-class public clouds based on VMware cloud infrastructure, including vSphere, vShield and vCloud Director. VMware says a network of service providers is slated to span 25 datacenters in 13 countries by year-end 2011. Bluelock, Colt, SingTel and Softbank have been announced as the first partners to offer Global Connect services.

According to VMware, "Customers will work directly with their local vCloud Datacenter service provider, who orchestrates services from connected providers with a single contact and 'single pane of glass' management across clouds using vCloud Connector."

First introduced in February, 2011, vCloud Connector was created to offer fast, reliable transfer between private and public clouds. Since that debut, VMware says over 1,300 of its customers have adopted the product. The newly introduced vCloud Connector 1.5 features a faster, more reliable data architecture that reduces the time required to transfer workloads, as it automatically resumes transfers that are interrupted by network glitches. It is also accessible via any compatible Web browser, or as a plug-in for vCenter Console.

The availability of vCloud.vmware.com signals VMware's growing emphasis on the enterprise hybrid cloud. It is an "online destination where enterprises can find vCloud service providers, learn about their capabilities and coverage, and quickly test drive new cloud services." Customers can then transfer workloads and data into those cloud services via the integrated vCloud Connector 1.5 Web client.

Turning its attention to disaster recovery, the VMware announcement says four VMware service providers will unveil new cloud-based DR recovery services based on vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5, which was initially introduced this July. The four are FusionStorm, Hosting.com, iland and VeriStor, and their goal is to make it easy and inexpensive to organizations of all sizes to protect their apps by enabling them to fail over to a service provider's site in the case of a disaster. These cloud-based services will be sold on a pay-as-you-go model.

VMware also took the wraps off an updated version of the VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit, which features design guidelines and examples to aid customers in their efforts to build hybrid cloud environments. As a further aid, VMware offers its vCloud Consulting Services, which include a "complete portfolio of professional services offerings to provide a common blueprint for next-generation infrastructure."

"Many customers want a choice of providers on a consistent, technical platform," says Joe Andrews, VMware director of Cloud Services. "CIOs have a worldwide interest and mandate to move to the cloud, but their biggest question is, 'What does the cloud mean, and how do I get their in an evolutionary way?'"

VMware vCloud Connector 1.5 is currently available as a free beta download, and is expected to be generally available in Q4 of this year.